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On Friday, September 1, 2017, RIFT’s Game Director Archonix did a tell-all Q&A about his time at Gamescom along with Senior Game Designer Captain Cursor and Community Manager Yaviey.

Last Friday, Chris “Archonix” Junior (Game Director, RIFT) was joined by Nicholas “Captain Cursor” McDowell (Senior Game Designer) and Jennifer “Yaviey” Bridges (Community Manager) to talk about Gamescom 2017 and answer player questions about the future of RIFT. Meanwhile, Captain Cursor jumped into several IA’s with players as his alter ego. Watch the whole video for all the answers!

https://youtu.be/wfhL7lz8C9c

Come back next week on Friday, September 8, 2017 for another exciting RIFTstream. We’ll talk with Dead Simon and Rough Raptors about their time at PAX West 2017. See you then!

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Seshatar is a German player who has been playing RIFT since 2011. He’s currently an avid streamer and community member. Learn more about him!

We want to get to know the community better and get you to know them, too! Welcome to our new monthly series where we interview various community members including fan artists, streamers, fan site owners, guild leaders, and more. For our first interview, meet Seshatar! You may remember him as the guy putting on the Celestial Storm Twitter contest going on from now until August 13, 2017.

• Q.: How long have you been playing RIFT?
• A.: I started RIFT in July 2011, I think it was between Patch 1.3 and Patch 1.4 when I began my journey through Telara. I remember when the original Hammerknell Fortress raid was launched while I was still leveling and I really enjoyed the pre-event for it. Now, over 6 years later, I have around 9,000 hours of play time just on my main character and still enjoy to hang out in Telara almost every day.
• Q.: What calling/souls are your main character in RIFT and what do you enjoy about it?
• A.: My main character is a Cleric and so are my other two max level characters. I chose the Cleric because I love to heal in MMORPGs and in 2011, where only Mages and Cleric could heal, the Cleric just had way more healing options. Back then I painfully leveled my Cleric as a Sentinel (I mostly leveled with dungeons). Nowadays I usually play Purifier or Warden in group content. Oh, and of course my famous 1-button Shaman. 
• Q.: What keeps you playing RIFT after all these years?
• A. The community. I think Telarans are the most awesome people to hang with! Oh, and of course the excellent and regular content updates we get from the dev team that give us new things to do and explore every few weeks. Special shout out to my girlfriend and worst Mage EU Kira, my guild <Skins on Farm> and all my in-game friends!
• Q.: What got you into streaming RIFT?
• A.: I have always been helping newcomers in game and tried to drag more people into Telara by posting news and articles in forums and online magazines and was brainstorming about other ways to promote my favorite game. I personally love to watch Twitch streams and RIFT didn’t have many active streamers, so I decided I’d just stream some of my game play to give interested people an insight into the game and the option to ask questions and directly get answers during the live stream. It didn’t take long and I had regular viewers that motivated me to continue and to improve my stream quality. After all, it was the best decision of my life to start streaming RIFT, because I met my girlfriend during one of my streams. She’s also supporting me in every possible way with my streaming. 

• Q.: What is your favorite thing to stream in RIFT?
• A.: I personally enjoy the BIG events most. Preparing cool stuff for the community, from 24h Extra Life streams to dimension PvP events, live cooking shows or in game contests is what I’m really passionate about. On the other hand, the more regular streams like raiding or casual gameplay allow me more interaction with my viewers, which I also love. If my community is happy, I am too.
• Q.: Do you have any advice for new streamers who want to get into streaming?
• A.: Be yourself. Be passionate. Be patient. If you love what you do people will notice that and enjoy watching you. At the beginning you might be nervous and only have a few lurkers coming to your stream. What helped me in the beginning was to close the Twitch window, so I couldn’t see how many viewers I currently had. Take a friend or guildie with you in voice chat and just play and joke around as you would usually do. Don’t look at the chat every 5 seconds. Networking is also very important. Watch other streamers and interact with them; maybe they’ll give you some support if they get to know you and enjoy your content – or might even be in for a co-op project. From a technical point of view, make sure the video and audio settings are appealing to viewers. You don’t need Ultra graphics, but stuttering video or a bad microphone can destroy your whole stream. Make the people come for the game and stay for YOU.
• Q.: Do you have any advice for new players coming into RIFT after watching your videos?
• A.: Be social, make friends, find a guild. RIFT is most fun if you play it together with others! If you like, feel free to add me on your friends list: [EU] Volturnus@Gelidra [NA] Seshatar@Faeblight.
• Q.: What got you into running contests for the community? What’s the best part about it?
• A.: I love to create contests! Working out the basic concept, the rules and prizes really challenges me as it requires a lot creativity to get people interested in participating. But when I’m done I can just relax, sit back and enjoy all the cool stuff the community is sending in. I’m always super impressed how people work on the task in different ways and create so awesome entries that I would love to give everyone a prize for their work! Checking the new entries for a contest every morning on the phone when I’m sitting in the train to work is really the best part about it!

Want to connect with Seshatar in more places? Follow him on Twitch & Twitter and don’t forget to check out his website for upcoming events, wardrobe services, monthly RIFT giveaways, and more!

We greatly appreciate Seshatar taking the time to interview with us in our first RIFT community interview series. Would you like to be interviewed in an upcoming segment? Tweet us @RIFTgame with the hashtag #CommunityQA and what you enjoy most about the game for a chance to be featured! Chat with us about this interview on the official forum post here.

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On Friday, July 14, the RIFT dev team took players to the future to visit 4.2: Celestial Storm. They then later brought in the art team to show off an in-depth look at the new zone, Vostigar and go through the creative process in bringing this area to life. Re-watch them and learn the secrets of the devs so that you can be prepared for the launch of RIFT’s next game update, 4.2: Celestial Storm!

4.2: Celestial Storm Dev Q&A

Our host, Linda “Brasse” Carlson (Director of Community Relations) was joined by Chris “Keyens” Meyer (Systems Designer), Christopher “Archonix” Junior (Game Director, RIFT), and Simon “DeadSimon” Ffinch (Sr. Design Director) to go over the new features of Celestial Storm, including two new mounts, new lockbox mechanics and rewards, new creatures, new story, and more. Also meet the brand-new Communtiy Manager, Jennifer “Yaviey” Bridges with special guest Nicholas “Captain Cursor” McDowell.

Vostigar ArtStream!

Brasse returned to interview Justin Stearns (Environment Artist) and Mike Chang (Senior Environment Artist) from the RIFT art team to explain the creative process and design elements behind the new zone in Celestial Storm, Vostigar Peaks. They completed the stream with an in-game run-through of the new overland zone in all its colorful glory. Once again, special guest Captain Cursor joined them to help explain some of the lore in the zone as it related to the new artwork.

We’ll be back for more fun on Friday, July 21, 2017. Stay tuned to learn who our guests will be and what we’re going to show off. Until next time, Ascended!